Friday, September 25, 2009

I don't have time to syphon off any more hate for you right now, I'm channeling everything towards a certain middle American state/afterthought: Iowa. Let me just say that after 1 "Iowa state facts" google iteration, I found that all my preconceived notions were true. Corn is a major industry, it's among the least visited MIDWESTERN states, and Herbert Hoover, president during our country's great depression, was born there. Also, Field of Dreams was filmed there, one bright spot. Now, I don't mean to be classist, but don't they have some weight to pull? We're just rewarding senate seats for that kind of performance? It doesn’t seem right... Let’s get to these comments from Adam Rittenberg’s ESPN Blog and other game conversation. Welcome to the truth vacuum people.

andyhawkeyes (in response to another post): I love how he says, "I just can't see Daryll Clark letting Penn State lose this one, especially after how he struggled last year in Iowa City." LOL! As if Iowa's defense had nothing to do with it. They are the reason we won that game. Also Mr. Rittenburg the games outcome doesn't depend on whether or not Daryll Clark wants to let Penn State lose or not. Iowa might not want to LET him win!

Response: Thanks for the revelation andy, I would hope Iowa doesn’t want to let him win. Daryll lost it for us, he said so himself, so it must be true. They won that game because 17 sailed a slant pattern to Derrick Williams for a pick and the Iowa offense drove the field, and their kicker made a clutch kick. The defense did an okay job, but we shot ourselves in the foot with poor offensive execution. However, this is the one subplot I worry about here. Clark has been very open about how much this game means to him and how he places last year’s loss solely on his shoulders. He might want this one too much. If Iowa comes out stuffing the run and we’re forced to pass I can’t say for sure that Clark won’t press. He needs to trust the guys around him to make plays, and we should be okay. The weather this time around should be a lot more conducive to passing: 55 and rainy, which is actually an upgrade from 25 and windy.

the_iowa_hawkeye (in response to another post): "Iowa will not be able to run the ball at will on PSU."Funny, that's what the Zona fans said last week.

Response: Zona doesn’t have Jared Odrick and Ollie Ogbu. If Iowa is going to have a chance they’re going to have to move the ball through the air. Which I do think they should be able to do a little bit. Stanzi seems to have the right “QB intangibles” that allow him to make throws when his team needs it. Penn State’s secondary is still not there yet, a couple guys were caught out of position last week and Vaughn actually put up some numbers on us. So the_iowa_hawkeye I’d be thrilled if Iowa comes out running.

hawk4trees: “Everyone!! I just returned from the future, and I would take Iowa to beat the spread if I were you. I will not, however, tell you who wins. (But it was one #### ugly game, eeeg)”

Response: So wise, so cosmically stoned.

UpsetCubsfan :Iowa beat Penn State again last year for the 6th time in 7 games. if you hit a button 7 times and it shocked you 6 times... what would you expect the 8th time you hit it? Would you already consider yourself stupid for not expecting a shock? Would you trust some dude from ESPN who says... go ahead kid... we say it will be alright this time! Would you talk smack about how there is no way this button will shock you THIS time and say "hey fellas.. watch this!"

Response: No, I probably wouldn’t touch the button again.

The 6 out of last 7 argument seems to be a go to for the Hawkeyes and why not? They get a real kick out of it, like when they see a dog chase a tractor. Looking at the last 7 PSU vs Iowa games I realized that “Yeah, they probably should’ve beaten us 6 out of 7.” I know Penn States dominance over the last 4 is an occupying thought, but looking back further than that we’re talking about the dark ages. Notre Dame 2007 dark ages. They beat us every year from 2000-2004, when we were a combined 26-33, a stretch during which they went 41-21. We did not play them in 2005, when we went 11-1, didn’t play them in 2006, we beat them in 2007 with Morelli at the helm, and then lost last year. So really they’ve upset us once in 8 years. Isn’t that the conversation we should be having? With all this history talk is anyone mentioning that Iowa’s ONLY national championship came in 1921!?!? Does that count? Do we even have to talk about how the landscape of college football has changed since 1921? This stuff drives me nuts. I don’t mean to make make you more upset, cubs fan, but if you thought that college football was similar to some electrically charged button, doesn’t that make you an idiot? If you were a real big shot and had huge nuts wouldn’t you just start a blog and parade around your opinion uncontested??

jritchkoff04 says: “ESPN said they simulated the PSU-Iowa game 10,000 times.They score it as PSU 27.3 to Iowa 13.8.They say that PSU covers the 9.5 point spread 64% of the time which is surprising given they have PSU having 2.7 TOs to Iowa's 1.7 TOs.They have PSU's win % at 83%.”

Miller_ms responds: “There's a reason why they play games in real life. Because on any given day, any team can beat another team. I bet if you ran the simulation of last years teams the end result would be similar of this years or favor PSU more. But what happened in reality?”

Response: Computers are always right.

The more I read about this Saturday’s game, the more I do think it will be close, but I really don’t see Iowa beating us. They just don’t have the talent that we do and our crowd is going to be ever so rowdy. A week ago I would’ve picked PSU 100-0, but I’ve calmed down a bit and I’m going with 41-20.

Also, there's a reason I write Penn State and you stalk Notre Dame, Navarro Bowman will play and Sean Lee actually does have an outside shot at playing. I would talk ND if I knew I had accurate information, like Michael Floyd being out for the year.

As a Iowa resident and a huge Hawkeye fan, the first couple paragraphs made me pretty pissed. Then the more I read, the funnier you got and by the end you had me believing pretty much everything you said, except for the final score. Funny piece nonetheless.